


So Keen a Sympathy

by sanguinity



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Book: The Sign of the Four, Community: holmestice, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Infidelity, Period-Typical Classism, Period-Typical Heteropatriarchy, Story: The Man With the Twisted Lip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:22:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2891915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I should have gone with you,” Kate said, and I looked up to find her watching me. “We should have gone away and gotten that little house together.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Keen a Sympathy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venusinthenight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venusinthenight/gifts).



> Thanks to Venusinthenight for the excellent prompts, Grrlpup and Gardnerhill for beta, and Language-Escapes for cheerleading. Also thanks to Violethuntress for her meta, “[No Crime, But a Very Great Error](http://violethuntress.tumblr.com/post/66630129471/no-crime-but-a-very-great-error),” which was foundational to how this story took shape.
> 
> Originally posted at [Holmestice](http://holmestice.livejournal.com/316725.html).

I closed the door behind my husband and his promise to return Isa Whitney to his loving home—I had a difficult time not smiling at John’s severity toward Mr Whitney, given how much time John spent away from his _own_ loving home—then turned and held my arms out to Kate. 

She was still distraught: her husband had never been gone for so long before, and anything might have happened to him down at the docks. I smoothed back her veil, and pressed a kiss to her disarrayed hair. It didn’t take John’s Mr. Holmes to see that she had spent the day fretting, too anxious to see to her hair properly, and then tossed a veil over it and come out in a rush. I tucked the loose strands into place while she curled into my shoulder. “There,” I told her. “It will all come all right. John will see to it.” 

“Your husband is a good man,” she said against my neck. 

She smelled exactly as she had at school, when she had been unequivocally my Kate. My arms tightened around her. We had been so young then. “He _is_ a good man,” I agreed. “When John gallivants off for days at a time, he almost always sends a note.” 

She laughed wetly, and pulled back to look at me. I wiped the tears from her cheeks and kissed her lips. “Come now,” I told her, “heaven knows what state that man will be in when John brings him back to yours. And while he doesn’t deserve any better nursemaid than my husband, it’s probably still best that we be there to meet them.” 

Kate continued anxious all through the cab ride to her home, and paced her sitting room while we waited for our husbands’ return. I worked on my lace, and occasionally said soothing things to try to calm her. I was picking out my third fatigue-induced error of our vigil when the bell jangled and Kate flew to the door. 

A disgruntled cabman stood there. Neither John nor Mr. Whitney was anywhere in sight. 

“I have a delivery for ye, ma’am. The gent said ye’d be wanting him, although I’m sure I don’t see why. I’m just as happy dumping him on the curb and getting on with my night.” 

The ‘delivery’ was Kate’s husband: Isa Whitney sat in the cab’s otherwise empty interior, fervently slurring apologies to an illusory Kate. It appeared John had given the man the tongue-lashing of his life before bundling him into the cab. 

“And my own husband?” I asked the cabbie. “The gentleman who gave you charge of this man?” 

“Ye’re Mrs. Watson?” the cabbie asked, and rifled his jacket for a note. 

I knew what it would say before I opened it; I had already suspected as much when we opened the door to find John nowhere in sight. A glance confirmed that John was off with his Mr. Holmes, with no indication of how long they intended to be gone, nor whether they would be in the city or out of it. I shot Kate a wry glance—one husband gained, one husband lost—but she was too busy with her half-insensate charge to notice. 

The cabman helped us get Mr. Whitney upstairs, and we tipped him generously for his trouble. I helped Kate undress her husband—a doctor’s wife has little need for a false show of propriety, and I had been Kate’s friend for far too long to leave the unpleasant task to her alone—and I brought an empty basin to his bedside, although Kate seemed to think he wouldn’t need it. We left his door off the latch, so that Kate might hear him if he took a bad turn in the night. 

“I can stay, if you wish,” I told her. “I was going to suggest it to John in any case, but I am entirely at your disposal tonight.” 

She looked to the stairs, as if noticing for the first time that my husband had not returned with hers. Her eyes swept me and landed on John’s note, which I had tucked into my sleeve. “Oh, Mary,” she said, full of sympathy, and reached out to clasp my hand. 

I squeezed hers in return. “Happily, Mr. Holmes is a far more salubrious habit than _that,”_ I reassured her, nodding at her husband’s door, “and I was well aware of John’s devotion to the man when I married him.” Isa Whitney, to Kate’s grief, had not been nearly so forthright about his own habits. “Shall I stay?” I asked again. 

“Yes,” she said, with something like happiness in her eyes for the first time that evening, “you shall.” She led me to her own room and closed the door firmly behind us. We would not be able to hear her husband so well, but he would not be able to hear us, either. Kate took me into her arms, and kissed me more warmly than I had kissed her earlier. 

When we pulled apart, she leaned against me and we breathed each other in. I ran my hands over her shoulders, above the edge of her corset, where I could feel her better. She shivered. “I have missed you,” she said, and I nodded, not wanting to speak. 

Her hair against my cheek was still terribly mussed. I pressed a kiss to it. “Come, let me brush this out for you,” I said, giving her a little push toward her dressing table, “and then you’ll feel more yourself.” She sat and I stood behind her, feeling through the dark mass for her hairpins. I absorbed myself in the task of hunting out each one and teasing it free. 

“I should have gone with you,” she said at length, and I looked up to find her watching me in the mirror. “We should have gone away and gotten that little house together.” 

I shook my head and dropped my eyes back to what I was doing. “It was as you said,” I reminded her, as gently as I could. “One pearl would have kept us a little while, but not long enough, and then I would have had to get a job in a shop.” Kate had been vehement that I must not stoop to such a thing: in her family’s eyes, the shame would have been far worse than governessing. If I had been of properly ladylike means—independent, or supported by my family—she might have persuaded her father into allowing her a small stipend, or allowing us to pretend that he had. Then we could have been just another two surplus women, unremarkable, making the best of our disappointments. But for his daughter to work for her living, or to associate with a woman who did… I shook my head again. “Your father would never have tolerated the scandal.” 

“But there were enough pearls, it wouldn’t have come to that. We could have done it, Mary!” 

“Hush now,” I chided. “We had no way of knowing.” It had been a dark day for us both when the second of the Agra pearls had arrived, unannounced and unlooked-for, with Kate already four months married. Every pearl thereafter had been a bitter taunt. John, when he met me during the murderous and final loss of the Agra treasure, had thought me refreshingly unmoved by the prospect of being an heiress, but in truth, I had already seen as much of that king’s ransom as I could stomach. “What’s done is done. And we’re getting along well enough as we are.” 

Yet I still kept the pearls locked away against the day that I could spend them on Kate, if that day ever came. Although God forbid, I might need to spend them on myself someday, if John did not come back from one of his adventures with Mr. Holmes. John himself, bless him, never asked after those last remnants of the great Agra treasure, but seemed to presume that I kept the pearls as a memento of my father. 

Kate cast a dark look at the door that connected her husband’s room to her own. “We’ve gotten along better.” 

“Well, yes,” I said, finally freeing the coil of her hair, and unwinding it to lay across her shoulders. “There must be something John can advise, as a medical man. But tonight I don’t wish to speak of it, not unless we have to.” I had few enough solitary hours with Kate without wasting them on talk about her husband. 

“Then we won’t,” Kate said, and she handed me her brush over her shoulder. 

I began methodically working the brush through her tresses, beginning at the ends and then working my way up her hair’s length with ever longer strokes. Her hair had always had strands of gold in it, but now there were sparkling threads of silver, as well. The mix was entrancing in the lamplight. 

Presently she touched my hand and I looked up again. I had lost myself in the cool, smooth weight of her hair. “Brush any longer, and I won’t have a hair left on my head,” she teased. I laughed and wove it into a loose plait, letting it fall over her shoulder. I leaned forward to loop my arms around her, and she watched me in the mirror for a few moments before turning her head to nuzzle at my arm. I felt the light nip of her teeth. 

“Shall I do yours?” she asked, and with a few touches and another kiss we switched places. I daydreamed as she worked, soothed by the gentle touch of her hands. She eventually finished my hair off with a plait to match hers. 

She checked on her husband once more before we dressed for bed. “He’s breathing well,” she reported as she slipped back into the room, again latching the door firmly behind her. 

“Good,” I said, determined not to think of him further. I helped her with the hooks on her dress, and then at last, had her skin under my hands once more. 

  

Kate’s husband was ill the next morning, but she asked me for his privacy, saying that he would be humiliated to know that I had seen him so. I thought the humiliation might do him good—he might finally see how low he had allowed himself to sink—but I abided by her wishes. I gave her one last kiss and told her to send for me if she needed me, and went home alone. 

I was trying not to yawn over the last of my coffee when I heard my husband’s tread in the hall. 

“John! I hadn’t expected to see you this morning.” He was rumpled and weary, yet radiated the particular pleasure he often carried with him when he had been away with his Mr. Holmes. “Just wait a moment, and I’ll ring for more breakfast.” 

He flushed, and his kiss of greeting was stiff with chagrin. “I already ate with Holmes, I’m afraid. I had thought you would be with Mrs. Whitney today, or I wouldn’t have left you to breakfast alone.” 

I smiled at the obvious fib; I doubted he had hesitated so long as to think about it. “Is the case done so soon? Or are you here in the hopes of some unmolested sleep while you await the grand climax?” 

His moustache twitched. “It was a quick one this time, he had me up before dawn for his finale. And yes, I was dearly hoping to squeeze in a nap, he had me awake half the night before that.” His hand was already at his throat, loosening his tie and collar. 

“Are you going to leave me to guess?” I asked. He looked at me quizzically. “Mr. Holmes was... Brilliant? Scintillating? Masterful?” I felt comfortable teasing him; there were times that John returned home half-broken and devastated after one of his friend’s cases, but this was not one of them. 

And yet there was something suddenly uncomfortable in his posture. “I shall tell you over dinner,” he promised me. “I’m too exhausted to do a proper job of it now.” On his way out of the room, however, he stopped and turned back. 

“John?” I asked, when he didn’t speak. 

“Whitney came back safe?” he asked after a moment. “The cabman was reliable?” 

I looked at him, trying to guess what he had been about to say before he changed his mind. He flushed, but held his tongue. 

“Mr. Whitney arrived safe, and the cabbie helped us get him to bed. His stomach is somewhat distressed this morning, I’m afraid.” John nodded once. Unsure of what he was hoping to hear, I added, “And I received your note, thank you, John.” 

He nodded again. “Then I shall swing around to check on Whitney this afternoon. Good night, my dear.” He turned down the hall, and a few moments later, I heard him climbing the stairs, his step a bit heavier than when he had first entered. 

John did not rise again until mid-afternoon. With fresh clothing and a shave, he looked respectable again. I had given his overcoat a good airing while he slept—it had reeked of the same cloying stink that had permeated Isa Whitney’s clothing—and I smoothed and resettled its lapels on my husband’s shoulders as he readied himself to go out. 

I gave him a note to pass to Kate, just a few lines reasserting my love and that I was hers if she had the least need of me. “You must see what you can do for Mr. Whitney,” I urged him, “if not for his own sake, then for Kate’s. She can’t go on forever like this.” 

His smile was wry as he tucked the note in an inside pocket. “Would that I had as much influence over men and their habits as you attribute to me, my dear.” 

I plucked a few stray bits of fluff from his hat and passed it to him. “Happily, not everyone is as hard-headed as your Mr. Holmes. I’m sure you’ll manage something.” I touched his shoulder in encouragement. “And even Mr. Holmes will come around some day, I’m sure of it. With you at his side, how could he not?” Under my hand, the stiffness suddenly returned to John’s posture. I drew back. “John, what is it?” 

He shook his head. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then said, “Only that you have such faith in me.” He leaned down for a kiss. “Don’t wait dinner on me, I’ll be back when I can.” 

When John returned four hours later, he seemed tired but not discouraged. He gave me a light kiss. “This is for you,” he said, putting a letter into my hands. “Go on,” he encouraged me, removing his hat and coat and hanging them up himself. “I can wait.” 

It was from Kate, of course. The first several pages had been written after my departure that morning, during the lulls in her husband’s illness, and were full of tender affection. I scanned them quickly: I would wait until I was alone to savour them properly. On the final page she had appended a short postscript, in a hand more hurried than the first, fulsomely thanking John for his efforts and me for sending him to her. I looked up. 

My husband was watching me fondly, a scotch in his hand. 

“You were successful!” 

“Perhaps,” he cautioned. “Whitney has agreed to go away to a sanitarium, where he can try weaning himself off the stuff away from the wharves. But it’s a wretched process, and his resolve may not hold. It’s far too early to know if any good will come of it.” 

“But no good will come if it isn’t attempted.” I put my arms around his neck, kissing him soundly. “And Kate is so pleased! Thank you, John.” 

He reached up to take my hand, the one without Kate’s missive in it, and squeezed it. “With luck, she won’t need to see the worst of it. I’ve given Whitney some morphine to hold off his symptoms until after our departure tomorrow. I’ll be going up with him, to try to keep him from baulking.” I continued to smile at him: this was the best news Kate had had in some time, and his restraint could not dampen my joy. He finally relented and smiled back at me. “Yes,” he allowed, “she is quite pleased.” 

“And I am very pleased, too.” 

He laughed outright at that. “And I am hopeful,” he admitted, and I gave him a kiss for a reward. 

I rang for John’s supper, then refolded Kate’s letter and tucked it into my sleeve. I kept John company while he ate and told me more of his visit to the Whitneys, then we retired to the sitting room, where he told me the story of the previous night’s adventure: the affair of a very foolish man who would rather be hanged for his own murder than confide his secrets in his wife. 

“What an idiotic man,” I said, when John had finished. 

“Holmes thought much the same. He called it a ‘very great error’ on St. Clair’s part.” 

“I should say so. Men would do far better to confide more in their wives. And especially so if there’s the prospect of gaol in the offing.” John’s odd, intermittent discomfort suddenly returned. It was the case that had been upsetting him, then. The case, and that ridiculous man who would rather hang than trust his wife with his secrets. It was exactly the kind of transgression that John would worry overmuch about, despite being in no danger whatsoever of committing. “John, you needn’t fret so,” I said, returning my attention to the needlework in my lap. “I already know everything that you and your Mr. Holmes get up to.” 

I had expected a rueful chuckle in response, an acknowledgement that he was over scrupulous in his worry, and when it didn’t come, I looked up. Consternation was clear on John’s face. I frowned. It seemed there was something about his and Mr. Holmes’s activities that John sincerely believed he had been keeping back from me? Something of significance, too, not a mere nicety of detail. 

John was typically candid with me about his adventures with his friend, far more so than he proposed to be with his public. I knew enough about their exploits to damn them both many times over, and could come up with no earthly reason that John might tell me as much as he already had and yet still hold back some substantial, further piece of it. Neither, I was sure, had he started practicing his friend’s vices in secret: it was clear with every word out of my husband’s mouth that he loathed and grieved his friend’s cocaine habit. Nor would John’s secret be a financial one. He was open about his accounts with me, and in any case, a financial matter would likely not have involved Mr. Holmes. Altogether, it left very little that John’s imagined secret with his friend could have been. 

So it was as I had sometimes wondered. He and his Mr. Holmes were almost certainly like I and my Kate: devoted friends who had stepped somewhat beyond the line of platonic affection. 

Something of my realization must have shown in my face, because John’s own went ashen. 

“My dearest Mary,” he stammered, sitting forward in his earnestness, “you must know—” 

“John,” I said firmly, to prevent him from blurting a confidence that his friend would not thank him to share. John stilled, and I tried to think how to salvage the moment. 

To say that I understood his position, because I and my Kate were the same: I could not make Kate vulnerable to him like that. Too many men would not tolerate in their wives what they happily overlooked in themselves, and while I believed in my heart that John was a trustworthy man, many other women, much to their sorrow, had also thought their husbands trustworthy. John was a good man, but like all good men, he would do what he believed to be right. I had no wish to risk being sent away for the cold-water cure or worse. 

But to say that I could overlook my husband’s transgression, and give no explanation as to why? I knew how John wrote of me. He thought me the ideal of genteel womanhood, and he loved me for it. If I refused to censure him and his friend—if I overlooked depravities that no decent woman ever could—would his esteem for me survive that failure? 

And yet I could not censure him. He looked as if I was about to rain ruin down on him and his friend both, and I could not abide seeing that expression in his face. I knew what his Mr. Holmes meant to him, and I loved my husband, even if we each loved another as well. 

There was little for it. I kept my tone light, as if I had misunderstood the source of my husband’s anxiety. “You seem to forget that I already know that you and your friend are not scrupulous about staying on Mr. Lestrade’s side of the law. And while the two of you are sometimes rash in your actions—” 

John’s face flared into colour, clearly answering the question of how rash the two of them had become. John Watson might be willing to walk through fire for Sherlock Holmes, but there were reasons his friend did not take him fully into his confidence, and I was witnessing one of them. I tried not to despair of my husband, and hoped that neither man would regret the confidence that they currently shared. 

“—Mr. Holmes would sooner lose his right arm than allow you to come to harm,” I continued, as if I had not noticed John’s reaction. 

John’s eyes slid away from mine, as they often did when I spoke of his friend’s affection for him. “Now, Mary,” he protested. 

His denial irritated me. “No. I will not have that, John Watson. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know you like to think of him as emotionless, but you should take this as a warning: if you ever put him in the position where he has to choose between his safety and yours, you will bitterly regret the result.” 

He was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “I think you misjudge him.” 

They were a pair of fools. “Nevertheless,” I said, unable to argue the point without admitting to how much I thought I knew. “However much you might egg each other on, I trust him to prevent any real harm coming to you. So whatever the _trifling matter_ is that you were so concerned about just now, I can trust that it will never result in me sitting home alone, left to wonder what has become of of my husband. And thus,” I fixed him with a pointed glance, “you need not confess it to me.” 

John’s face was a picture. “I see.” He seemed to be deciding whether he could, in good conscience, accept my urging to let the matter be. He went to the sideboard to pour himself another drink; I returned my attention to my lacework in my lap. 

“And if one of us makes an error of judgement, and Holmes and I do find ourselves in gaol?” he asked. “What then?” 

I put my needle and shuttle down. “Then you will immediately send word to me, so that I might come and fix it.” His mouth tightened; he disliked my answer. “John, Mr. Holmes may be the worst kind of unorthodox, but you are both good men. If you find yourselves in trouble with the law, then it will undoubtedly be for the best of reasons—” 

He shook his head vehemently. “Mary, you’re attributing entirely too good of motives—” 

“—or because the _law_ is wrong, not you.” 

He went stock still. For a few moments, it seemed that he didn’t know where to look—his eyes flickered between me and the rest of the room—and then his gaze caught on my hands in my lap. Too late, I realized I had been fingering the edge of Kate’s letter in my sleeve. My fingers faltered before I could master myself, and that small tell was enough. Realization flowed across his face. 

It was my turn to go ashen. 

John cleared his throat, then deliberately took up one of the evening papers and crossed to his chair. He sat in silence, using his paper to obscure his face. 

That was how it was to be, then. I put my face in my hands, trying not to give in to despair. 

“John,” I said, when I could take his silence no longer. 

“Whitney is going to be away for several months,” he said from behind his paper, as if we had been talking about something else entirely. “I worry about Mrs. Whitney rattling around in that empty house all alone for so long. Perhaps it would be good for her to go away while her husband is convalescing? To the Continent, perhaps?” 

“John?” I asked. I didn’t know what he was suggesting, but I would fight him if he was proposing to send Kate away for treatment. I still had the pearls. Kate and I would run away together if we needed to. Disappear as best we could, and hope that Mr. Holmes would show mercy and decline to follow us. 

“Perhaps… you should like to join her?” 

I could not stand not seeing his face. I reached across the space between our chairs and touched his hand. He lowered his paper enough to peep at me over the top. 

“Are you sending me away?” 

His eyes went wide. “Oh, good lord, no.” He lowered his paper fully, the sheets crumpling against his lap. “I thought… I thought it should please you? To have some time with your Kate, away from all the gossips and flibbertigibbets and that wastrel of a husband of hers.” 

“So you are not sending me away.” It seemed very important to confirm the fact. 

“No,” he said firmly, hastily putting his paper aside to reach for my hands. “Of course I’m not sending you away, Mary, I would miss you dreadfully. I hate to think that you might have married me because you had no better options—” 

“Oh, _John,_ no, that’s not the way it was at all.” 

“—but we’d still make the best of it, even if you had,” he pushed on. He squeezed my hands between his. “You haven’t been very unhappy, have you?” 

His expression was so pained that I couldn’t stay where I was, and I crossed the space to sit on the arm of his chair. He put his arms around me, and after a moment, I slid myself down into his lap, where I fit against him better. “It was never a case of any port in a storm, John. There was no storm, not by the time I met you anyway, and you’re… Oh dear, this isn’t my _forté,_ I have no idea what distinguishes a good port from a poor one.” 

He looked up at me. “A tall, bright light-house.” There was some emotion in his eye that I didn’t understand. 

I shrugged. “I’ll leave the seafaring analogies to you. But I’m not unhappy, John, truly. I only wish Kate were happier.” 

“Which was why I thought you might want to go away with her. She would enjoy that, wouldn’t she? As would you. And it’s practical: she could put it about that she and her husband were going to the Continent, and when she came back, she would have the proper stories, all neat and tidy. Perhaps a memento or two.” 

“Oh, well, if it’s practical,” I said, and he smiled. “And where would we say that I have gone?” 

He shrugged. “To your mother’s, I suppose.” 

I swatted the crown of his head. “Half of London knows my mother is dead. You published it in the Strand.” 

“Your aunt, then, it hardly matters.” 

“I look forward to someday meeting all these fictional relatives you’re giving me.” More soberly, I asked, “This really is all right with you? You don’t mind?” 

He squeezed my waist. “You remember what I said when we married?” 

“That you didn’t want my marriage to you to be the death of my friendship with Kate.” He abhorred the old saying about marriage and friendship, and had vehemently refused to tolerate good-natured teasing about how he would henceforth monopolize my time and attention. 

“Just so,” he said. “You’ve been friends since you were girls.” 

I examined his face, turning it to the light so that I could see his expression better. Search as I might, there wasn’t a trace of guile or hurt in it. “You really don’t mind.” 

“Well, I shall miss you. I believe I said that before.” 

“As if you’ll sit around here and pine, John Watson. You’ll go straight around to Mr. Holmes’ and make a nuisance of yourself, I know you.” 

“Where I’ll be subjected to obnoxious deductions about what an ill-kempt scarecrow I’m becoming, and how my wife has obviously left me.” 

“Oh, hush,” I told him, and kissed him. “Now you’re just trying to get sympathy for a plan you dreamed up yourself in the first place.” 

He grinned up at me, and took another kiss. “Go write to your Kate,” he told me, pushing me off his lap and taking up his paper again, “and tell her what a gallant husband you have. You can send it over by the morning post, and perhaps she’ll have an answer for you by the time I go around to escort Whitney to the train.” 

In the door of the sitting room I stopped to look back at my husband. “Thank you, John,” I told him. 

He flicked down the corner of his paper down so I could see his eye—he was amused—and then flicked it back up again. 

And I ran upstairs to savour my letter from Kate in private.

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up reading quite a bit about Victorian and Edwardian lesbians during my research for this, and it was too good not to share, so I posted some of [my favorite primary sources at my tumblr](http://sanguinarysanguinity.tumblr.com/tagged/so-keen-a-sympathy-primary-sources).
> 
> I've written two prequel ficlets for "So Keen a Sympathy":
> 
>   * [First of Seven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6495571/chapters/25891377) (SIGN) 
>   * [Prologue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2891429)
> 

> 
> And okapi has written two more 60-word ficlets!
> 
>   * [Aunt Morstan](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6540835/chapters/19607080) (FIVE) 
>   * [Not 'but,' 'with'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6540835/chapters/19607194) (TWIS)
> 


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Prologue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2891429) by [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity)




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